SmartJoy FRAG

Want to play Halo 2 or Killzone with a mouse and keyboard? Our full review.

By Chris Roper

Updated: 22 Oct 2011 12:39 am

Posted: 22 Oct 2004 12:55 am

While console first-person shooters have gotten much better overall in recent years and incorporated things like online multiplayer and downloadable content, the only thing that really separates playing a console FPS and a PC FPS anymore is your control mechanism. Playing with a joystick simply cannot compete with the freedom and ease of movement you're allowed with a keyboard and mouse combo. A handful of PS2 games have built-in support for USB devices, though the number of games that do support USB keyboards and mice is rather limited. And while the Controller S is a capable FPS controller, Xbox owners have unfortunately never had the keyboard/mouse option.

But all of that has changed. SmartJoy, makers of various controller converters including the popular PS2 to USB converter for PCs, is now releasing the SmartJoy FRAG for either PlayStation 2 or Xbox, available from Lik-Sang.com.

Targeted at first-person shooters, the device will allow you to use a keyboard and mouse as a controller replacement in any game. As we said, it's targeted at first-person shooters, but third-person shooters or any other game with a free-look control scheme should work reasonably well. You probably don't want to be playing Tony Hawk with it, though.

The device has PS/2 (the PC kind, not the system) ports for both keyboard and mouse input. Most USB mice and keyboards ship with those green USB->PS/2 converters in the box, but you'll need to grab one or two if not. Simply plug the device into any empty controller port, plug in your mouse and keyboard and you're ready to go, minus configuring the keys if you want or need to.

Configuration

By default, your mouse simulates the right analog stick, WASD simulates the left and the arrow keys act as the directional buttons. Enter is start, the spacebar is either A or X (depending on the system) and the other keys are set in various places. Some of the default keys are set up reasonably well, like the analog click buttons are set to Q and E for easy access, but some of the face buttons of both controllers are scattered over the keyboard. You'll almost certainly want to change those because of the layout, but it's likely that you'd want to have done that for each game anyway.

Luckily, configuration is both a snap and well thought-out. To change a key, you hold ESC, press the original key, press the new key and then release Escape. Easy as that. The smart part about it is that no matter if you've loaded a completely different configuration or not, when you're holding Escape to change the setup, you press the default key for that button to select it.

For example, the right trigger (or R1 on PS2) is assigned to the left mouse button by default. If you've already changed that to the P key for whatever reason but then want to change it again, you press Escape and then left mouse button, the key's default setup, and not P, the newer setup.

It may sound like it could get confusing, but this helps in two important ways. Firstly, it prevents you from overwriting a key you've set up and then not having access to select it again to change it. Second, and more importantly, if you've forgotten what key you assigned a button to, you can easily set it again by selecting the default key.

Another smart option is being able to swap the mouse over to controlling the left analog stick instead of the right. While most first-person shooters use the right analog stick to look around, you may want to use the mouse for something like Crimson Skies where the left analog stick does most of the flying. You also have the option of forcing inverted mouse-look in case the game you're playing doesn't support it.

Other notable configuration features are that you can save setups and use the mouse wheel. The mouse wheel part is rather self-explanatory, but know that you can assign both scroll directions and the mouse wheel click as buttons.

The device comes with eight presets for the system it's on, but you can overwrite those. For example, the Xbox SmartJoy FRAG has presets for Halo, Chronicles of Riddick and more. If you'd like, though, you can set up your own configuration and overwrite one or all of them. Then just press the correct function key to load it, or hit F12 to load the default. You can do this anytime, so if you want to switch configurations in-game, go right ahead.

The one problem with all of this is that it can be difficult to remember keys when you first start playing a game with a new configuration. You'd get used to it after a bit, but it may take practice. As well, you'd better make sure you keep the included key layout card until you've permanently memorized the default layout or else you'll be searching for keys in-game.

The Deadzone

The deadzone is an important concept to understand when configuring the mouse. Basically, every game has a small amount of analog stick movement that it doesn't register. This is so that input isn't counted as the analog sticks jitter, since they can make slight movements when you're playing and mashing on buttons. It's a very small area that you probably don't notice with a controller, but translating that directly to a mouse doesn't work all the time.

The SmartJoy FRAG allows you to adjust this setting, anywhere from 0 to 90. You just press Escape and 0 through 9 to pick the tens (10, 20, 30, etc.) and then Escape plus the plus or minus keys to make singular adjustments (31, 32, 33, etc.). Every game has a different ideal deadzone. Most games work well somewhere between 30 and 50, though some games may require the extremes. The deadzone setting can also compensate for the lack of a sensitivity setting in some games, like MechAssault, which we'll cover in a minute.

It usually isn't too much of a pain to find a nice setting, but you may need to play with both the in-game sensitivity setting as well as the deadzone setting to find a proper balance. This usually doesn't take more than a minute or two though, and the deadzone setting can be saved along with configuration setups.

Gameplay

So the main question here is, "How well does it work?" The answer is actually entirely dependant on what game you're playing. It can range from being OK to excellent, depending on the title. The problem is that some games compensate a whole lot for joystick use, and this doesn't always translate well to mouse use.

The worst I've seen the SmartJoy FRAG perform is just OK. In those cases, some things may be better about using a mouse/keyboard and others may be better with a controller. But even at those times I'd probably still use the SmartJoy FRAG over the standard controller. In the games where it works really well though, there's no question at all that I'd rather use it than a controller.

The two main problems are due to joystick acceleration and lack of a sensitivity setting. Some games use acceleration with joystick movement, like Rainbow Six 3. If you press the controller slightly, it'll move slowly. If you press it all the way to the edge, it'll move slowly for a second but then pick up speed to help you turn around faster.

The game assumes you'll be controlling the game like this and it can screw with mouse use a bit. Since you can't "hold" the mouse at the end of its movement, everything will always be slow. If you have it set up where the deadzone offers fine movement, even at the highest sensitivity setting in-game you'll have to pick the mouse up multiple times to turn around. If you get aggressive with the deadzone setting to make movement faster you'll start having problems with finite movement.

Sniping can become a pain, though you can learn to compensate for it. You're basically trading off having better all-around, sweeping movement for less accuracy. In the case of a game with this problem, like Rainbow Six 3, it's a close call, but I'll probably take the keyboard/mouse combo over the joystick.

The lack of an in-game sensitivity setting can be a pain as well. You generally need to crank this all the way up in a game that allows it, so if a game doesn't have this option you'll constantly be picking up your mouse. Serious Sam on PlayStation 2 has this problem. Messing with the deadzone can help adjust sensitivity when you don't have an in-game option, though sometimes it can mess with fine movement.

Of the games that we tested the units with, the ones that worked best were Halo, TimeSplitters 2 on both systems (even though it lacks an in-game sensitivity setting), Killzone, MechAssault and Crimson Skies, surprisingly.

Halo just works damn fine with the SmartJoy FRAG. Movement is as smooth as butter and being able to spin around or look anywhere quickly is a godsend. Our only complaint with this is that the vertical movement is slower than the horizontal, but that's not too big a deal. Hopefully Halo 2 has options for both.

MechAssault was very nice to play with the SmartJoy FRAG, partly due to the fact that you can assign your jumpjet to any key you want. Normally you use it by clicking the left analog stick, which means you have to keep it held while still steering. I had it mapped to the right mouse button, and it work beautifully. Everything else about the game worked nicely as well with smooth controls like Halo.

Killzone on PlayStation 2 worked very well also. The game doesn't seem to have any sort of auto-targetting or joystick acceleration which makes it a perfect candidate for mouse use. Movement was dead-on and smooth.

We should say that the games we tried on both systems, including Hitman: Contracts and Rainbow Six 3 among others, performed equally on both platforms. There doesn't seem to be any difference between the two units other than the plug that goes into the system, its shape and color.

Overall

The SmartJoy FRAG is somewhat of a hard unit to review and give an overall score to. On the one hand, it's built well and has some smart and easy configuration features. On the other hand, how well it works control-wise is almost entirely dependent upon the game you're playing.

The way we figure it is that if you own more than one first-person shooter on either PS2 or Xbox, you'd do yourself well by picking one up. It works great with some of the best software on either system, especially Halo (and presumably its sequel) on Xbox. And you gamers out there looking forward to Killzone should pick up the PS2 version as it'll do you well in your killing of zones.